


If You Say So

by WanderingAlice



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Major Character Death- Sort Of, Ouch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-14 12:39:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2192172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WanderingAlice/pseuds/WanderingAlice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's no guarantee that they'll always both make it back home alive. But when the odds finally fall against them, the impact on Bucky is worse than either of them imagined. Especially once the dreams start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Say So

**Author's Note:**

> This idea pulled at me, and wouldn't let go. Sorry for all the angst!
> 
> The story is inspired by the song of the same title by Lea Michelle
> 
> (I know I promised I'd have a new series/chapter fic up when I got back from vacation, and I can promise that it is being worked on. It should be up in a few weeks, but for now I'm getting a few one-shots out of my head, and trying to work on David, which I have been very remiss on updating.)
> 
> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy!

“Ok, we need to neutralize the giant cannon. Stark, I want you in the air, blast that thing with everything you’ve got. Thor, you’ve got the creatures surrounding it- keep them off Tony until he can blow it up. Bucky, Hawkeye, I want you two up on the buildings, picking off anything that tries to leave the immediate area. Buck, see if you can get the scientist who started this whole thing. Falcon, you’re air support. Widow, you go around back and attack from that side. Hulk, smash. I’ll take it head on, see if I can distract them.”

Steve’s speech was met with a chorus of agreement as they all prepared for battle. There was a giant cannon sitting in the middle of Times Square surrounded by some crazy human-animal hybrid soldiers- complete with a mad scientist with a plan to bring the city down around their ears. Just another day at the office. Sometimes, Bucky forgot other people never even thought about doing the crazy and dangerous things he could do with his eyes closed.

“Hey, Steve,” Bucky called through the comm link, watching his lover through the sight on his rifle. “We’re still on for the movies tonight, right?”

Steve grinned up at him. “Four o’clock. And dinner after. Don’t you be late.”

Bucky nodded. “It’s a date.” He settled in to wait, ready to kill anything that dared attack Steve.

Down below, Steve grabbed his shield, preparing to charge. Hulk was smashing left and right, the soldier creatures flying everywhere from his attack. Steve’s voice sounded in Bucky’s ears as if he were right next to him. “I love you, Bucky.”

Bucky couldn’t help the smile that threatened to break his face in half. Ten and a half months, and it was still hard to believe it. Sometimes he felt like this was all just a wonderful dream, and someday he was going to have to wake up.

“I love you more,” he said, something he’d heard Tony say to Pepper the other day.

Steve paused, looking up at him, and his soft breath echoed in Bucky’s comm before he replied.

“If you say so, Buck. If you say so.”

Then he was gone, racing towards the cannon while Tony squawked that the comm was an open line, and to “keep the lovey-dovey shit to yourselves”.

What came next happened so fast nobody could have stopped it. Tony was up in the air above the cannon, his strongest attack doing very little to even dent the casing. Hulk continued to happily smash, while Bucky and Clint picked off stragglers and any creature that dared to leave the main group. Thor was busy with a clump of the things that had jumped on him, trying to remove his hammer. Natasha was nowhere to be seen, but Bucky could hear her shouting through the comm that the scientist was coming their way. Only Steve was close enough when they saw the blue glow as the cannon started to activate, ready to end hundreds of innocent lives. He secured his shield on his arm, and ran.

Bucky saw what he was doing and cried out through the comm. “No! Steve, don’t!”

Steve ignored him, racing forward to press his shield to the mouth of the cannon, bracing it with his shoulder. The enemy soldiers scattered, keening in terror. The scientist came around a corner, Widow in hot pursuit. He saw Steve, and pressed the large button on the remote he held.

Bucky’s world narrowed to Steve and the cannon. He heard screaming in his ears, barely registering that it was his own. Blue light collected around Steve’s shield, rays shooting out to bathe him in a halo of light. There was an explosion, the cannon cracking around the edges from the force bottled within. And then came the blast. Steve was thrown backwards in a wave of light, shield torn from his hands. He was unprotected and in the path of devastation. His body hit a building, and the building exploded. For one moment, Steve was illuminated in front of the blast. Then the flames took him. The cannon collapsed in on itself.

Bucky didn’t remember getting down from his perch, or running across the square. He didn’t register the creature-soldiers fleeing in panic, or Natasha tackling the scientist. All he knew was that Steve was hurt, and he needed to get to him. He screamed into his comm for Steve, calling his name, begging for him to answer. Silence.

The fire was still raging, but it had been blown back from the location of the blast. Bucky tore through the smoldering rubble where Steve had been thrown, desperate, searching for anything that could be his friend. His heart stopped at a charred scrap of bright blue poking out from under a block of concrete, and he threw the giant shard of ceiling away to reveal… a mannequin dressed in a blue shirt and jeans.

The others came to help, and soon the first responders appeared, searching through the broken building. They found a few bodies- civilians who had been too stupid to evacuate when the square was attacked- and a few wounded. They didn’t find Steve.

Hours later, Natasha and Tony approached, Nat holding Steve’s shield. She pressed it into Bucky’s hands and said quietly “James, it’s time to stop. He’s gone.”

“No!” Bucky shook his head, denying it. Until he found a body, he wouldn’t admit that Steve was gone. He couldn’t. It just wasn’t possible.

“Bucky,” Tony put a hand on his shoulder, face unusually kind. “That blast was enough to shatter a building, and he was caught right in the heart of it. There probably isn’t anything to find.”

Bucky punched him and ran. He didn’t know where he was going, until his feet carried him to the street where he and Steve had lived in the ‘30’s. He collapsed outside the old apartment building, hugging Steve’s shield to his chest, and let out a gasping sob. Alone, in the darkness of an alley where he’d saved Steve from bullies too many times to count, he sat, and he waited. Steve would come home to him, just like he always had, and always would. They’d followed each other across the world and through the years. Surely, if Steve were to die, Bucky would soon follow.

So he waited, to see which it would be. Steve would come for him, one way or the other. Just like he’d come after long days working down at the docks. Just like he’d come to Schmidt’s lab. Just like he’d come after Washington, and again after Bucky had run from the hospital. He would come. He _would_.

Darkness fell. Gradually, the street lights came on, and people made their way home. Some looked at Bucky strangely as they passed. Some seemed not even to see him. Nobody stopped to talk. Bucky didn’t care. None of them were Steve. Still he waited, and waited, and waited. His watch ticked past eight, and then nine. It was drawing on towards ten, when someone finally came for him. Not the person he wanted, no, not Steve. But by then he’d begun to accept the inevitable, and part of him welcomed the friendly face as something to distract him from the misery inside.

It was Bruce that found him, for which Bucky was grateful. Anybody else, and he probably would have hit them again and raged. But Bruce was, well, Bruce, and so mild mannered it was really impossible to be mad at him for long. He just sat down next to Bucky and waited, with his never-ending patience, for Bucky to acknowledge him. His eyes held no pity, only sorrow- a shared sense of loss.

“The last thing I ever said to him was ‘I love you more,’” Bucky said finally, not looking up from where he’d curled around Steve’s shield. “What if… what if he thought that meant I didn’t think he loved me? What if… what if he died, thinking that?”

“He knew you knew how much he loved you,” Bruce said, the past tense like a punch in the gut even though the words were meant to reassure. “He knew how important he was to you, because you were just as important to him.”

“Yeah…” Had Steve died, thinking Bucky hadn’t known how much he loved him? That would be unthinkable, when everything Steve had ever done had screamed it for the world to see. Bucky had been proud to stand at his side when they announced their relationship to the press, loving him just as much then as every moment before and after. Surely, Steve had known that. He had to.

“He knew,” Bruce said again. “He left you this.” A letter was thrust under Bucky’s nose, addressed to him in Steve’s handwriting.

_Dear Bucky,_ he read, in the dim glow from the streetlights.

_If you_ _’re reading this, it means I’m dead. I told Nat to give this to you, in the event of my death. I don’t want you to worry, or think it was your fault, or any other dumb thing like that. Whatever happened is what was meant to be, so don’t you go thinking about the ‘what ifs.’ I know you. You’ll want to find someone to blame for this. Don’t. Be happy that we had our time together, short as it was, and take comfort in the memory of our love._

_I_ _’m leaving you everything, love. The apartment, my things, everything. I only ask you one thing in return. Be happy, Bucky. I love you._

_Love,_

_Steve_

It was signed in Steve’s familiar signature, a large scribble Bucky would never again get to tease him for. Strangely enough, it was that realization that finally pushed Bucky over the edge, and his tears began to fall. Bruce sat silently beside him, all but forgotten in Bucky’s grief. He clutched the shield tighter to him, holding that last little piece of Steve, the last thing Steve had touched in this world. His tears fell onto the cold metal, leaving glistening tracks in the dust and battle-dirt that covered it. Still sniffling, Bucky pulled a cloth from one of his pockets and began to wipe the shield down, cleaning it. It was his now, if he wanted it. He didn’t think he could ever let it go.

At length, when his tears had stopped falling for the moment, and the shield was as clean as he could get it, Bucky stood. “I guess we’d better get back,” he told Bruce, and didn’t wait to see if he would follow. He simply made his way back to Avengers’ Tower, up the elevator, and into the apartment he shared with Steve. Had shared.

The others were waiting for him in the darkened living room, holding a small candle-lit vigil for their fallen comrade. Bucky walked past them, shutting the door to his bedroom behind himself. Two sets of jeans and two neatly pressed dress shirts greeted him from the bed, a reminder of the night he _should_ have had. He brushed his off into a pile on the floor, but carefully hung Steve’s clothes back up in the closet. He always liked his things kept neat and tidy, forever harping on Bucky’s messy ways. He’d never bought the argument that it was an organized mess.

Once Steve’s clothes were put away, Bucky stripped off his battle uniform and fell face-first onto the bed, still clinging to Steve’s shield. He couldn’t cry any more, his tears were all dried up for now, and that was almost worse than the weeping. Someone had once told him that tears are meant to cleanse the soul, that’s why they sting- they carry away the hurt. Nobody told him what to do when those tears were all gone, when there was nothing left inside him _but_ the hurt. Steve was gone, and that was a pain that would never go away. Steve wanted him to be happy, but how could he? How could he be happy, when the very best thing in his life was gone? Was this how Steve had felt after Bucky’s fall from the train? So hopeless and empty? How had he gotten through it? It felt like the world itself was sitting on Bucky’s chest, weighing him down, crushing him.

It should have been him, he decided. Of the two of them, Steve was the one that deserved to be alive. Steve was a good man, a good friend. Bucky had forgotten him for seventy years. Steve was Captain America, the protector of the nation. Bucky was the Winter Soldier, the fabled nightmare assassin. Steve was open and honest, artless and painfully innocent at times. Bucky knew too much of pain, and sometimes he felt that he only remembered how to lie and hurt. Steve brought life and light into the room. Bucky brought only darkness and death. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right _or_ fair, but Bucky had learned that that was how the world often was. And now, heart filled with pain, he learned one more thing- it might be the way the world was, but that didn’t stop him from hating it. With that thought, Bucky’s exhausted body dragged him down into a fitful sleep.

 

The next day was no better. He woke to a line of burned-out candles against the wall, the last one unlit, a mute reproach for leaving his friends the night before. Steve would have been appalled at his behavior. But then, Steve wasn’t here to reprimand him. He didn’t feel like reprimanding himself, either. Instead, he allowed himself to feel resentful that they had expected him to join them at all. _They_ hadn’t just lost the most important person in their lives. Natasha had left him a note to call her when he got up, but he ignored it. He didn’t feel like talking right now, and she’d probably want him to tell her how he was _feeling_ , as if words could sum up the massive hole inside him. No, that wasn’t going to happen.

Someone else had put breakfast on a plate for him on the counter, his favorite, scrambled eggs and toast with bacon. It was right next to the microwave, ready to be reheated. He ignored the plate and went to the fridge, pulling the milk out and drinking right from the carton. _Come on Steve,_ he mentally dared his friend. _Come yell at me for being uncivilized._ Nada. He put the milk back and stalked from the kitchen.

Moving on autopilot, he cleaned his gear, and then Steve’s shield. He had a list of things he had to do after a mission, and when he’d finished he could barely remember doing them. The only thing left on his list was to write his report. Normally, he would gripe about how ‘being a hero is ninety percent paperwork’ with Steve, while they sat side by side in front of the TV. Today he just couldn’t bring himself to attempt that task alone. He felt like he’d had a finite number of things he was able to do, and he’d exhausted them all already. He ignored the computer, instead collapsing on the couch. All he really wanted to do was sleep, but the thought of his empty bed was terrifying in a very real way. The couch would do. And maybe a little background noise.

Turning the television on was a mistake. Every news station was reporting on the ‘Death of Captain America,’ and the History Channel was running an all-day marathon of Steve’s movies. Every other station he turned to either reminded him of Steve, or was running some sort of program about him. It was like on September 11th, when you couldn’t escape the 9/11 programming. Eventually he just turned it off, deciding silence was better. But the silence ate at him. It was _too_ quiet. He was used to the sounds of another person sharing this space. Alone, it felt empty. Bucky jumped up and turned on the old record machine, letting the sounds of their childhood fill the room. It was still painful, but in a less raw way. Childhood had been a long, long time ago, and he’d already done his mourning for what they had lost back then.

It took some more time before he fell asleep again, but eventually Bucky passed out on the couch. He stayed there for the next 48 hours, not moving, not even eating unless one of the others came up and forced him. Even when they did, he barely registered their presence. He didn’t have any energy left in him, he’d used it all up trying to keep to his normal after-battle routine. And even if he had had any, dreams were ultimately preferable to life as it was, empty of Steve.

Most of Bucky’s dreams were disjointed, flashes of color and memory, Steve’s laugh, his blue-sky eyes alight with love, the park where they went to watch baseball, scenes from the war, and from after. Eventually, they began to clear, become more coherent. Whole memories played themselves out against his eyelids, fading from pure memory into scenes he’d imagined for the future. And then, he dreamed of Peggy. That, in and of itself, was strange. He hadn’t known her all that well, either during the war, or after. He hadn’t gone to visit her in the nursing home, but he’d been by Steve’s side at her funeral. She’d been important to Steve, and Bucky guessed he’d liked her well enough, even though she obviously had designs on Steve (and even then, Steve had been _his_.) But he’d never really thought much about her after her death. Seeing her surprised him enough to jerk him into a semi-lucid state within the dream. He knew that he was dreaming, but let the dream drag him on as it would.

“Barnes,” Peggy addressed him in the dream, as if expecting a salute.

“Ma’am?” Bucky greeted her, automatically snapping to attention. There was something in her that demanded respect, even if this was a dream. She was young again, as she had been back in 1944. She was even wearing her old SSR uniform, and that bright red lipstick. Her sharp gaze raked over him, not missing anything. He suddenly felt embarrassed at his rumpled state, clad only in his pajamas, hair mussed, teeth un-brushed.

“Where’s Steve?” Peggy asked him. Bucky looked away. Even in his dreams he couldn’t escape reality.

“He’s… he’s dead, ma’am.”

“Look at me, Barnes,” she demanded. He kept his gaze firmly on his shoes. “Barnes. Look at me,” she repeated, and he felt a cool touch under his chin, forcing his head up. He looked her in the eyes, and glared. She had no right invading his private dreams. Peggy Carter was dead already. If there truly was a heaven, then she was already with Steve. She had no place in his sorrow.

“Where’s Captain Rogers?” Peggy asked again, holding his gaze with her own dark eyes.

“Steve’s dead,” Bucky told her, and her face began to swim before him, obscured and distorted by his tears.

“Do you truly believe that?” she wanted to know, not letting him look away, even though he was crying now.

“I…” Bucky closed his eyes. “I… yes. I have to. I saw him d- get blown away by that cannon.”

Peggy made a sort of humming noise, and Bucky opened his eyes again to see her gazing thoughtfully off behind him.

“Did you find his body?” she demanded, and Bucky sucked in a sharp gasp of breath. He wanted this dream to end now, it was prodding at all the sorest points in his mind. He didn’t answer her.

“Did you find his body?” she repeated, grasping his shoulders and giving him a little shake, as if to wake him up (which was silly, since this was already a dream.)

“No,” Bucky shook his head, looking down again. “No,” he told his shoes. “We searched for hours. We only found his shield.”

Peggy hummed again. “I see. You never found his body, and yet you are prepared to give up on your friend. I had thought better of you, Barnes.”

“No!” Bucky took a step back, stung. “No, I’d never give up on him! But there’s no other solution. He’s gone. He was in the direct line of the blast. It must have… it must have disintegrated him.”

“Is that what Stark and the Black Widow tell you?” Peggy asked.

Bucky nodded. “Yeah. They… they said there wasn’t anything left of him to find.”

“And you believe them?”

“I, yeah, I do… no. No, I don’t. I don’t want to believe them.” Stupid Peggy Carter, pulling at the worst of his emotions, not letting him mourn in peace.

“Good,” she told him, and smiled. “Then there is hope yet. Come-” she started to say something else, but a sound cut through her, dissolving the apparition in front of him. Sound and light whirled around, and suddenly Bucky was blinking up at the concerned face of Sam Wilson.

“Come on, Bucky. You’ve got to get up, man,” Sam was saying, shaking his shoulders. From the look of things, he’d been trying to wake Bucky for some time. Bucky was furious. Peggy was just about to tell him something. Something that would prove Steve wasn’t dead. And Sam had interrupted her.

“Fuck off,” he told his friend. He didn’t want to be awake. He needed to go back to that dream. The dream where Steve was alive.

Sam shook him again. “Come on, Buck. You’ve been in the same spot for two days. That’s not healthy, you’ve got to get up. Today’s the memorial ceremony. Steve would want you there.”

Oh. Right. The memorial. Someone had mentioned that yesterday.They’d have a big one in a couple weeks, a big state thing, but Steve’s friends wanted something small and private, before the media ran roughshod over everything, turning their private grief into a circus. Everyone accepted that Steve was gone. That they’d seen him burned to ash in the explosion. Everyone was wrong. If they would just let Bucky sleep, he’d figure it out. He’d understand how to get to Steve.

“’S not dead,” he slurred out, still half asleep. “Peggy said. Or, she was gonna, if you hadn’t woken me up.”

Sam sighed. “Bucky, that’s a dream. Don’t get lost like that. Steve would want you to be happy, to live. This isn’t living.”

“Steve would want to be alive,” Bucky snapped at him. “Or are you all in such a rush to see him dead?”

Sam recoiled as if slapped. “I don’t like it any more than you,” he told Bucky sternly, anger and pity battling to take over his face. “But I’ve got to accept the facts. Steve was in the direct blast of a cannon that leveled a building. He was thrown back into a fire that that blast caused. I was watching when he was hit, I saw him fall. Steve is _gone_ , Bucky. He’s gone, and you acting like this isn’t going to bring him back.”

“No,” Bucky shook his head. He couldn’t accept that. “Steve’s alive. And I’m gonna find him. Peggy’s gonna tell me how.”

“James,” that was Natasha’s voice. She moved past Sam and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Listen to yourself. Peggy Carter is dead. She died three months ago. She can’t tell you anything.”

“Can,” Bucky insisted. “If you’ll let me get back to my dream, she’ll show me how to get back to Steve.”

“You slept for two days already, James. It’s time to get up. Steve wouldn’t-”

“You don’t know a damn thing about what Steve would or wouldn’t want!” Bucky exploded. “None of you assholes do. You don’t give a damn about him. You just want to have his funeral, so you can get back to your ‘normal’ life, as if nothing ever happened! Fuck off, Natasha. Leave me alone.” He turned his back to them, a clear signal to let him be. Sam made a sound, as if attempting to find something to say. Natasha stopped him.

“Come on, Sam. We’re not going to get anywhere here,” she told him, and Bucky was grateful. Good. More time to be back in his dreams. If he was lucky, he could catch Peggy again, and she’d tell him what she’d been leading up to before. He could see Steve again.

“Alright,” Sam said, defeated. “But I’m coming back tonight, Bucky. And I’m bringing Stark to help me make sure you get up and eat dinner.”

They left, the door gently closing behind them. Bucky barely heard it. He was already trying to get back to sleep.

Peggy was there, waiting for him exactly where he’d left her.

“They mean well,” she chided him. “You didn’t have to be rude.”

“’Course I did,” Bucky told her. “It was the only way to get them to leave me alone. You were about to tell me something. Steve’s not dead, is he?” The rational part of his mind told him that this was madness, and he was only going to hurt himself when he woke up. The larger part of him didn’t care. He’d take what he could get, dream or no.

Peggy smiled at him. “No, no he’s not. But he needs your help.”

“Anything,” Bucky said, and he meant it. Whatever Steve needed, no matter what it was. If there was even a _chance_ to be with him again, even in a dream, Bucky would take it.

“Come with me,” Peggy reached out and gestured for him to follow, then she turned and walked away. As he obediently kept pace just behind her, the edges of the dream-world started to blur, sharpening and filling out. Details the dreamer hadn’t noticed were missing suddenly appeared, turning the scene around him from a normal dream into something close to stark reality. Suddenly, without him quite noticing how she did it, Peggy was gone, leaving Bucky standing in the middle of what looked like one of the high security cells in Avengers’ Tower. He knew them intimately, as he had been a resident of one for several months before being deemed fit to live like a normal person again. This one was laid out exactly as his had been, a small table with two chairs, a cot, and nothing much else. His eyes were drawn to that cot, or, more specifically, to it’s occupant- Steve.

Steve was unconscious, so still Bucky knew he had to have been knocked out or sedated somehow- when sleeping normally, Steve liked to shift over until he was snuggling his pillow. Or Bucky. But when he’d been knocked out, he slept like a rock. Right now, that was probably a blessing. He’d been burned all over, though a few ragged scraps of blue still clung to his frame. He looked terrible, blackened skin flaking off parts of his face, while the fresh pink of healing skin marked where lesser burns had already begun to disappear. From the state of him, Bucky estimated he’d been like this for two or three days- exactly the time he’d been presumed dead.

The door opened, and in trooped a very familiar group of people, with very subtle differences. But before Bucky could react, Steve stirred. The people crowded around him in a semi-circle, but Bucky’s vantage point was slightly higher, and he could see over them to the bed that held his wounded lover. Steve shifted, eyes squeezing tight together as he registered the pain he had to be in. His hands clenched and unclenched, and a low moan escaped his lips. Bucky wanted nothing more than to run to him, to be by his side and comfort him. But he found that, while he could move, he could not move any further into the scene. Steve’s eyes slid open, and he took in the small group around him. He glanced around and then locked eyes with… himself.

The obvious leader of the group, Not-Steve, was frowning down at Steve in concentration. Before he could say anything, though, Steve looked away, searching the faces for someone.

“Bucky,” he called, and Bucky felt warmth and pain shoot through him. Warmth, that Steve would ask for him before anything else. Pain, because he couldn’t go to him. There was a man in the group that looked just like him, but he’d kept his short regulation haircut and there was something off about his face. Steve focused on him for just a second, before sliding past him, dismissing him. Not his Bucky.

“Where’s Bucky?” Steve demanded of Not-Steve. He and the others exchanged blank looks, confused. Obviously Not-Bucky didn’t go by that name. Good. Less confusion for Bucky. Not Steve looked exactly like Steve, save for a long jagged scar that ran from his jawbone up past the tip of his ear. Bucky thought he knew which weapon would have made that scar, and he found it on Not-Bucky’s hip. Obviously this Bucky hadn’t woken up quite so soon from the brainwashing. Bucky felt a small sense of satisfaction that at least _he_ hadn’t scarred _his_ Steve.

“Who the hell is Bucky?” Not-Bucky asked, the familiar words in a familiar voice making Steve wince. But he’d reached the same conclusion that Bucky had upon seeing Not-Steve at the head of the group- these were not his Avengers, and so he shrugged it off.

“He’s my partner,” Steve explained, eyes drawn back to Not-Steve. “I thought he was here when I woke up. Guess I was wrong.”

“Okay…” Not-Steve was still frowning. “And who the hell are you?”

Bucky almost laughed, hearing a swear word spoken in Steve’s voice. This man was _very_ clearly not like Steve. Bucky’s imagination must be a very odd place, to produce this scenario.

“Steve Rogers. Who’re you?” Steve returned the frown. It was almost the same expression, except for the way Not-Steve’s flesh pulled a little around his scar.

“Grant Rogers. Captain America,” Not-Steve told him. Huh. Different name. Same title.

“Right…” Steve drew the sound out, looking around again at the others in the room. Not-Natasha stood by Not-Bucky, the only real difference between her and the real Natasha was a tattoo of a spider that was clearly visible on the back of her neck, under her very short hair. Next to her was Not-Clint, who had longer hair than Bucky had ever seen him with. Not-Thor looked much the same as ever, but Not-Tony had shaved, and he just didn’t look right to Bucky without his facial hair. Not-Bruce had a beard, which looked just as odd as a beardless Tony. And Bucky didn’t know the man standing next to him, where he would have expected to find Sam. But the man was wearing Sam’s wings, so he had to be their version of Falcon. This was some odd dream.

“This must be one of those alternate realities Thor and Bruce and Tony were talking about last week,” Steve said, rubbing his head, and wincing when his fingers brushed one of his worst burns. “How did I get here?”

“We were about to ask you the same question,” Not-Tony told him. “Seeing as how you look like the good captain here, under all those burns, we figure you’re some sort of clone. I’d gone for a robot, but we checked, and you’re human.”

“I am? Good.” Steve closed his eyes and leaned his head back onto the pillow. “Not a clone though. There was a cannon in Times Square. It was about to kill a lot of people, so I plugged it with my shield. Last I remember, I was being pushed back by the blast.”

“That would be consistent with his injuries,” Not-Bruce stated. “A cannon blast would account for the severity of the burns on his front and shield side, while impact against some surface would have created the damage to his back and ribs.”

“So, he’s not a clone?” Not-Tony looked disappointed. “Ah well, back to the drawing table on that one. Alternate realities, now. Hmm…. If the cannon blast was big enough, and contained the right elements…” he drifted off, thinking.

“Wait,” the guy with Sam’s wings said. “Hold on. Are we actually considering that he’s from a different reality?”

“Riley,” Not-Natasha sighed, and Bucky recalled that Riley was the name of Sam’s dead wing-man. Looked like, in this dream at least, Riley survived instead of Sam. Bucky didn’t know what to make of that. “You’ll get used to things like this,” Not-Natasha continued. “Happens all the time. Two years ago, it was an alternate Anthony that showed up.”

“Man that guy was a pain,” Not-Tony said, snapping back into the conversation. “Evil-me. Tried to kill me and take over my life. Seems his got a little fucked up somewhere along the line, so he wanted what I’ve got.”

Riley was shaking his head. “Sorry guys. This all just seems a little… Star Trek. I mean, Evil Anthony? Sounds a lot like Spock with a goatee.”

“Now that I think of it, he _did_ have a goatee,” Not-Tony said, amused. “I wonder if his Pepper was as big an asshole as Evil-Kirk was. Though, seriously, if we were the crew of the Enterprise, I’d totally be Kirk. Or Scotty. He’s the one that gets to do all the cool stuff with the ship.”

Not-Steve coughed, and the others looked up from their tangent. Whatever was different, at least that was still the same. “Alright. So, you say you’re from an alternate universe. Do you have any proof to that claim?”

Steve blinked at him for a second, then sat up- slowly, painfully. Bucky longed to go to him, but the dream kept him prisoner right where he was. Damn his sub-conscious. Maybe if he could forget it was a dream, it would let him go.

“I don’t know how I can. All I can tell you is that I am Steven Rogers, and in my universe, I am Captain America. I’m on a team with Bucky Barnes, my best friend, partner, and the Winter Soldier.” Not-Bucky looked a little startled at that, and everyone threw him a glance, but Steve continued on, oblivious. “Natasha Romanov, the Black Widow. Tony Stark, Iron Man. Thor. Bruce Banner, the Hulk. Clint Barton, Hawkeye. And Sam Wilson, Falcon.”

Riley gasped at that last name, eyes going wide. “Sam?” he asked. “Sam’s alive?”

Steve looked at him, and seemed to come to some conclusion. “I’m sorry, Riley. In my world, Sam’s alive, but you died.”

“Fuck,” Riley looked down, and Bucky could see he was fighting back tears. “How…?”

“A mission gone wrong. There wasn’t anything Sam could do.” Steve’s words were gentle, and Bucky knew he was using his ‘consoling’ voice. He’d heard it too many times after a battle.

“Just like with me,” Riley said softly. “It was a night mission. He flew too low. Always trying to protect me.”

Nobody really knew what to say after that. Until Not-Tony broke the silence.

“Well, I think we can safely say he’s not a spy. Or if he is, he has crap information. Got our names all wrong and everything! Just for example, the Winter Soldier is Jimmy here, not somebody named Bucky.”

Not-Bucky scoffed at that. “Or he could just be making shit up so we’ll tell him the right information.”

“Look,” Steve said, “I can’t prove I’m not a spy. And I can’t prove I’m from an alternate universe. I guess-” he broke off with a wince, putting his hand up to his shoulder, where movement had cracked the black crust on one of his burns.

“I think we should trust him,” Not-Clint spoke up for the first time, and the others turned to look at him. “If he was a spy, he wouldn’t put himself in our power so easily, or with such an unbelievable story.”

“True enough,” Not-Steve nodded. “Anthony and Bruce can do some research on alternate realities, see if his story is possible.”

“I will assist,” Not-Thor added. “I have heard my father speak of such things, a long time ago.

“Glad to have you,” Not-Tony said, clapping Not-Thor on the shoulder. “Come on, Bruce. Captain’s orders.” Not-Bruce nodded, and followed them both out.

“So.” Not-Steve turned back to Steve. “What should we do with you in the meantime?”

Before Bucky could see the answer, something shook him, cutting through his dream once again. Everything jarred slightly to the left, blurring and fading out, replaced by a perfect close-up of the cushions on Bucky and Steve’s couch. He was curled up, nose pressed into the brown fabric, while someone was gently shaking his shoulders. He grumbled, annoyed. He’d seen Steve!! It had been a good dream. And he didn’t know if he could go back to it, now that he’d woken up. Whoever this was shaking him was going to be sorry.

“Come on, Bucky,” Tony’s voice identified the shaker. He sounded worried, more worried than Bucky had ever heard him. “Come on, wake up, buddy.”

“Go away,” Bucky growled. His throat felt sore, like he’d been thirsty for a long time and was just now noticing it. His stomach complained that it was empty. He didn’t care. He wanted back into his dream.

“Bucky,” Tony sounded relieved. “You’re up. He’s up,” he called, to someone else.

“Good. Keep him that way,” Sam called back from the direction of the kitchen. “Make him drink that glass of water.”

“Oh, right,” Tony said, and Bucky heard the clink of a glass. He tried to curl up tighter, just wanting Tony to go away. “We’ve got water for you, Snowcone. You have to drink it. Jarvis says it’s been almost thirty hours since you had anything to drink. You’ll start to get dehydrated. I think even you know the human body can’t go more than three days without water.” He tugged insistently at Bucky’s shoulder, but Bucky tried to roll away from him. He didn’t care about that. He wanted Steve.

It took a lot more coaxing, insisting, and finally threats to get Bucky to drink the water. They forced two liters down him while he sat there, and left a third on the coffee table for him to drink over the next couple hours. The first liter of water had also been filled with some sort of solution Sam called ‘oral re-hydration salts.’ They tasted nasty, but Sam assured him they would do the trick. Bucky just let him and Tony do what they wanted, hoping if he did what they said, they’d leave quicker. He was right. An hour after he’d been so rudely woken, he was allowed to go back to sleep.

 

This time, he wasn’t even aware of the transition from reality to dreaming. He only realized it when he saw Peggy sitting on the armchair Sam liked to appropriate when he visited. She smiled at Bucky, and grabbed the remote from the side table, flicking on the TV, where they saw Steve standing in some sort of lab setup strapped into a chair with little monitors attached to the least-burnt parts of him. He’d already healed considerably since the last time Bucky had seen him, but his skin still looked angry red in places, and with his torn uniform shirt removed, Bucky could see that the burns crossed his chest and wrapped up and around his back.

“So, this will tell you what universe I come from?” Steve was asking, and Not-Thor came into view, nodding.

“I believe so. Then the Man of Iron can devise a machine which will send you back, if all goes according to plan.”

“Which hasn’t happened yet,” Not-Tony added, crossing the screen with a bundle of technology in his hands. “Though, I suppose it’s fair to say an alternate version of Grant was not in _anyone_ _’s_ plans for the week.”

“At least he’s not an evil alternate version of Grant,” Not-Bruce pointed out from his position in the background with a set of monitors.

“There is that,” Not-Tony admitted. “Truth be told, if we compare Steve here against Captain Stick-Up-His-Butt, I’d say our Grant is the evil version.”

“He’s not that bad,” Steve protested, sticking up for his alternate self. “Just a little, ah...”

“He’s fucking Lawful Good, is what he is,” Not-Tony said, and for a second Bucky was confused, before he remembered that ‘alignment system’ Tony had tried to assign them all. He’d assigned Steve Lawful Good, but with the caveat that sometimes he seemed more ‘Neutral Good’ nowadays, never breaking the laws himself, but letting others do it if it was necessary (case in point, letting Natasha throw what-was-his-name, the bald Hydra agent from the whole Project Insight debacle, off that skyscraper. Never mind that Sam had been there to catch him.) Bucky had been ‘Chaotic Good,’ along with Natasha. Everyone else had been pretty much ‘Neutral Good,’ save for Tony, who they all agreed was just pure Chaotic.

“Steve’s probably Lawful Good too,” Not-Bruce said.

“But he’s not a dick about it,” Not-Tony countered. Not-Thor nodded.

“Indeed. I find Steven a more amiable companion than Grant Rogers. Our Captain has a fondness for enforcing his rules that Steven does not seem to have.”

“I heard that!” Not-Steve’s voice came from off screen, and the view shifted to show him lounging on a bench in the corner. His presence gave the conversation another light- his teammates had been teasing him, just like Steve’s team teased _him_.

“You were meant to,” Not-Tony told him. He opened his mouth to say something else, when the machines Bruce was monitoring began to beep wildly. The room erupted in a flurry of activity, centered around Steve and the computers. Sensors were shifted around Steve’s body, and Bucky winced in sympathy from the pain his lover had to be feeling from the ones stuck to his burns. He didn’t complain though, simply gritted his teeth and bore with it. The beeping grew more insistent, adding various tones over the initial high beep. It sounded like a chorus of computers. Gradually, it slowed though, as Not-Bruce and Not-Tony fiddled with dials on the monitors. Then, as if achieving a great discovery (which maybe they were,) Not-Thor pointed emphatically to the screen.

“There,” he said. “That’s the one. See how it glows? It is reacting to matter of it’s own kind. This is Steven’s universe.”

“Fuck,” Not-Bruce breathed. “There are millions of them. And all of them have alternate versions of us?”

“Not all,” Not-Thor assured him. “In some, you, or one of your ancestors were never born. In some, you died early. In some, you never took part in the experiment which created your Hulk. It is the same for the others. In some, Anthony never became the Man of Iron. Or Grant did not take the super-soldier serum. That is the nature of alternate universes.”

“Unlimited combinations,” Not-Tony said. “It makes sense, if every big choice creates a different universe. It’s like that story, _The Sound of Thunder_. Step on a butterfly, change the history of the human race. Or, the future. Depends on how you look at it, I guess.”

“Does this mean you can get him home?” Not-Steve asked, pointing towards Steve, who nodded.

“Maybe,” Not-Tony told them. “I’ll need to run some more calculations.”

“Do it,” Not-Steve ordered.

 Peggy flicked the TV off. “Do you see now?” she asked.

“See what?” Bucky wanted to know, eager to get back to seeing Steve. Fuck his stupid subconscious, and whatever game it was playing here.

Peggy sighed and shook her head, turning the screen back on.

Now the screen showed Steve, sitting alone in an almost-exact replica of their second bedroom in the tower. His head was in his hands, and he when he looked up, Bucky could see he had been crying. His burns only looked marginally better. Bucky bet it was a few hours at most since the last scene. Dream-time was funny that way. Bucky ached to go to him, to wipe away the tears he could still see in his eyes, to tell him it would all be alright. But he was watching this all on a television screen. Stupid dream. But it was better than nothing, at least.

Someone knocked on the door, and a young woman entered. Bucky faintly recognized her as Sharon Carter. Or, well, Not-Sharon Carter. She and Steve were friends, in his universe, but not close. That might be different here, though, since she was wearing what had to be one of Not-Steve’s shirts- it was far too big for her, and sported a US Army logo on the chest. But then, so was Steve. Bucky guessed it had made sense for him to borrow some of the guy’s clothes, seeing as how their bodies were almost exactly the same.

“Hey,” Not-Sharon said, sitting down on the bed next to him.

“Hey,” Steve responded, glancing at her, and back down at the floor.

“I figured you might need a friend,” Not-Sharon told him. “Someone not busy trying to rip the universe in half, or whatever it is Anthony and Thor are talking about.”

Steve shot her a quick smile. “Thanks,” he said. “But I’m fine.”

Not-Sharon frowned at him. “You say that exactly the way Grant does when he really means ‘I’m not fine at all, but I don’t know how to say it in a way that will make me seem unmanly.’ It’s stupid. You should say what you mean.”

“I mean it,” Steve insisted. “I’m fine. I just… miss home.”

“Missing your girl?” Not-Sharon asked.

Steve laughed and shrugged. “Something like that. My partner. Bucky.”

“Oh. You mean _partner_ -partner. Like a boyfriend.” Not-Sharon’s eyes went wide. “You mean you’re gay?”

“Not exactly,” Steve told her. “More like, I like people. No matter what gender.”

“Hmm…” the girl looked thoughtful.

“I take it Grant’s not like me?” Steve asked. She shook her head.

“No, he’s not. He and I… well. We’re something, I’m not really sure what yet.”

“And… Jimmy?” Steve hesitated before saying the name, as if he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.

“Dating Natalia,” Not-Sharon said. “Anthony, Bruce, and Pepper are in a bit of a three-way, and Clint’s married, or used to be married. Nobody’s really sure, he doesn’t talk about her much.”

“Tony, Pepper, and _Bruce_?” Steve was shocked. Bucky was too. What the heck was his subconscious thinking? Well, at least it was better than seeing that universe’s Not-Bucky throwing himself at Steve or something.

“Yep,” Not-Sharon nodded. “Surprised us all too. But they fit together, somehow.”

“What about Betty?” Steve wanted to know. Not-Sharon gave him a blank look.

“Who?”

“Betty. Bruce’s girl.” Steve reached for his phone, where he kept all his photos, only to stop short. It must have been ruined in the accident. Good thing Bucky kept backups of everything on the computer, after the first time Steve’s phone got destroyed in a battle.

“Huh. Never heard of her.” Not-Sharon shook her head. “I guess that’s one of the differences between your universe and mine.”

“I guess,” Steve agreed.

“So, you and your Bucky… was he ever, y’know…” Not-Sharon made a vague gesture towards her head.

“Brainwashed?” Steve guessed, and she nodded. “Yeah, he was. Hydra had him. He didn’t wake up until he’d almost killed me. And then it took a hell of a lot of work from both of us to get him back on his feet.”

“But he didn’t…” Sharon drew one finger down the side of her face, mimicking Not-Steve’s scar.

“Nope,” Steve shook his head. “We were fighting on a helicarrier, and I fell. Somehow, he woke up enough to save me. Broke through the conditioning, we think when he saw me fall. He’s not really clear on the details, and the doc says he might never be. But that’s fine. All I need to know is that he came back to me.”

Bucky smiled, feeling warm all over. Of course he came back. He always would. He loved Steve.

The TV flicked off. The edges of the dream went bright and then faded to black. Bucky opened his eyes to see Sam standing over him with a plate of food.

“Breakfast,” he said. “You’re going to eat. Now.” He set the plate down on the table, and handed Bucky a knife and fork. After standing over him as he ate, Sam shepherded him through a shower and a change of clothes. Somewhere in there, Bucky learned that it was now four days from when Steve had died, and his friends were getting very concerned about him. Oh the fuck well. Steve was alive in his dreams, so that was where he would be.

On his way back to the couch, eager to get back to his dreams, Bucky heard something pop and sizzle. He and Sam both looked over, to find a burnt piece of paper in the middle of the floor. It flaked away to ash as they watched. Bucky shrugged, not caring. It didn’t have anything to do with his dreams. With Steve. He stretched out on the couch. Back to dreamland.

But Sam had a different opinion, and called Tony, Bruce, and Jane down to investigate. Their loud discussions and occasional machine whirring kept Bucky awake. He wanted to cry. Why couldn’t they just all leave him alone? He just wanted to sleep. To have his dreams. To see Steve. He didn’t care about some strange paper burning up on the floor. He closed his eyes and tried to rest, but it was hours before he fell asleep, and for most of the next night, he didn’t dream. He kept waking, checking the clock, and being disappointed when it had moved, and he still hadn’t seen Steve.

Finally, finally, when he had begun to worry that the dream wouldn’t come at all, he opened his eyes to see Steve sitting on a chair in Not-Tony’s lab. The man himself was standing in front of a machine, pushing buttons and turning knobs with Tony’s usual manic energy.

“This time for sure,” he said. “I’ve got it calculated right. Right, big guy?” He turned to Not-Thor, who nodded. “Right, then, time for the test. Paper?”

Not-Bruce handed him a sheet of paper, which Bucky saw had today’s date written on it, and a message he couldn’t quite make out in Tony’s handwriting. Not-Tony put it in the machine, on a spot that looked big enough to hold a full size man. Actually, it reminded Bucky somewhat of a transporter from Star Trek. He half expected Not-Tony to say ‘energize’ when he hit the button.

Not-Tony did not disappoint. “Energize,” he cried, slamming his hand down on a big red button. The air around the machine made a popping and sizzling noise, and then went silent. The paper was no longer there.

“Did it work?” Steve asked. Not-Tony and Not-Thor looked to Not-Bruce, who sadly shook his head.

“It made it there, it looks like, but without a proper receiver on the other end, it just burnt up on entry.”

“Fuck,” Not-Tony said. “So we have to figure out if there’s a receiver in that universe?”

“One that’s set to receive from our universe,” Not-Bruce added. “Statistically, it’s almost impossible.”

“What about getting a message through?” Steve suggested. “You said it burns up on arrival, but that means it arrives. What if we send something else, something that might last long enough for someone to read it and figure it out?”

“What about that flame-resistant paper?” Not-Tony asked. “It lasted about half a minute in the hottest test fire.”

“We could try that,” Not-Bruce mused. “What if we added the flame-resistant compound we put on the lab walls when you started playing with that stuff. It could increase it’s resistance for a little longer, perhaps thirty seconds. That would give us about a minute, before it would burst into flames.”

“Why would it catch fire if it was able to resist for that long a time?” Not-Thor wanted to know.

Not-Tony answered. “It’s the universe rejecting matter that didn’t come from it. Seeing this, I’m surprised Captain Not-Grant over there managed to make it through to ours at all.”

They then fell into a rather high-level scientific discussion on the properties of alternate universes, and travel between them. While they talked, Riley came up and sat next to Steve.

“Tell me about Sam?” he asked, by way of greeting. “You say he’s the Falcon in your universe?”

“He is,” Steve nodded. “He’s a good guy. Saved my life more than once, and he’s the reason I was able to get Bucky back at all.”

“Sounds like him,” Riley agreed. “Does he… does he miss me?”

“He doesn’t say so outright,” Steve told him. “But he does. I can tell when he looks at Bucky and me, and I can see he’s thinking about the two of you.”

“So we were together?” Riley asked. “Like you and your Bucky?”

“No,” Steve shook his head. “I don’t think you’d gotten to that point yet. What about you?”

Riley looked away. “No, not… almost. I was going to tell him, that night. When we got back from the mission. I was just going to say it. And then…”

“I’m sorry,” Steve told him.

“Yeah… me too.” Riley stared at the machine and the his teammates, who were now doing crazy science things with it. Bucky didn’t think that was really what he saw though, his eyes were a long way off and years in the past. Eventually, as Not-Bruce made a sort of scientific-discovery noise, and the others converged around him, he spoke again. “Do you… do you think, maybe, your Sam would want…”

“Want to meet you?” Steve asked, guessing at the words Riley had been unable to say. The soldier nodded.

“Yeah. Maybe… no, sorry, it’s a bad idea.”

Steve shrugged. “I don’t think so. I think it could actually be a really good idea. If we can ever work out this whole communicating-between-universes thing.”

Riley brightened at that. “Really? You think so?”

“Yeah, I do.” Steve’s honest gaze and firm speech were enough to convince anybody of his belief. That had always been one of his greatest gifts, and he used it now to comfort the soldier beside him. Somehow, he always seemed to know exactly what the people around him needed to hear.

“Steve,” Not-Tony called to him. “Come here, we think we’ve got something. Want to write the message?”

“Sure,” Steve stood and went over to the machine, where Not-Tony handed him a rather shiny and plastic-like piece of paper and a strange sort of pen. Steve put it down on the table and began to write. Bucky’s view zoomed in over his shoulder, where he was able to read the words: “Bucky, I’m alive. Alternate universe. See if Tony can create a machine to link our world to this one. I miss you. I love you. Love, Steve.”

When the message was written, Not-Tony took it back, and after some conference between them, Not-Bruce added a string of letters and numbers to the bottom of it, with the title ‘coordinates’. Then they put it on the machine, and it vanished in a sizzle and a pop.

“Bucky!!” Clint was shaking him this time. “Bucky, wake up. Stark’s picking up a temporal disturbance.”

“Fuck off,” Bucky told him. Why the hell did people keep waking him up anyway? They should have learned better by now. Bucky didn’t _want_ to wake up. But no, they had to keep waking him up for food, or water or, what did Clint say? Temporal disturbance? What the fuck was that anyway? It didn’t matter to Bucky.

“Wake up,” Clint demanded again. “We’re already a man down, and if this whatever-it-is wants a fight, we’ll need you. Bucky. Wake up.”

Bucky growled some obscenities at him, trying to stay in that warm half-asleep state that would get him back to his dreams faster as soon as Clint left. Too late. Clint threw a glass of cold water over him, effectively chasing the last of the sleep-haze from his brain.

“Suit up,” he commanded. Bucky shook his head, stubborn. “No, you don’t get to say no, Bucky. We need you. You don’t get to check out on us.”

“Bastard,” Bucky grumbled. “Le’ me ‘lone.”

“Nope,” Clint said cheerfully, looking inordinately pleased with himself for getting a reaction out of him. “Suit up.” He tossed Bucky a stack of clothes, that turned out to be his battle uniform. Bucky dumped it on the floor.

“Just let me sleep. I don’t care any more.”

Clint’s gaze went hard and steely. He leaned in, invading Bucky’s space until their noses were almost touching. “You don’t care? So, Steve died, and the rest of us don’t matter at all? Is that it? Well, I’ve got news for you, asshole. We all cared about Steve. He was _family_. You moping about like this isn’t going to change anything. But if you’re not there, and we get pulled into another battle, and one of us dies because we need you? That’ll be on you. And I can tell you right now, Steve wouldn’t be happy about that. You’ve got two choices here. You can sleep yourself to death, or you can get up and rejoin the world, stand up for what Steve believed in. What’s it gonna be?”

The whole speech was delivered in a soft, deadly voice that left little doubt as to Clint’s current opinion on Bucky’s actions. It struck something in Bucky, in the core of him, the parts that hadn’t been fogged over by grief. He should get up. The Avengers needed him. He knew that. But he just couldn’t bring himself to care enough. Another part of his mind, slipping into his thoughts like a soft grey mist, whispered that they didn’t really need him at all. They’d be fine without him.

“Clint!” Natasha dashed into the room. She’d mostly finished putting on her own battle gear, but her hair was a riot of curls where she hadn’t yet had time to tame it. “Come on, Stark says it’s about to break through. Thor says it’s coming from another dimension. He’s worried it might be another army like Loki’s.”

“Fuck,” Clint swore. “Ok. Fine. Bucky, you don’t want to come? You don’t have to. But if we need you, and you aren’t there…” He left the threat hanging, and ran after Natasha, up the stairs that led to the roof.

Bucky sunk back down onto the couch, closing his eyes. Instantly, Peggy appeared before him.

“Aren’t you going to go help them?” She demanded, hands on her hips. “Sounds like they need you up there.”

Bucky shrugged. “They’ll be fine. Show me Steve again?”

“No.” Peggy said.

“No?” Bucky felt a whine creep uninvited into his voice.

“No,” she said again, shaking her head. “I think they might really need you up there.”

They stared at each other for some time, Bucky glaring, Peggy resolute. Then she sighed. “You’re in a right state, aren’t you?” she asked, and came closer. She pulled a small bottle from her purse (and since when had she had a purse?) and uncorked it, waving it under Bucky’s nose. It smelled terrible. The harshest, most bitter smell imaginable. His head snapped back, and he gasped, trying to breathe in clean air. She put the bottle away.

“What _was_ that?” Bucky wanted to know. Then the last few minutes replayed themselves in his head. “No, nevermind. I’ve gotta go.” He’d been being stupid. And his friends might be in danger. Just because he wanted to see Steve, that didn’t mean he could let his duty to the others go away. He’d already spent almost five whole days making them worry. There would be time enough for his dreams later. Peggy smiled at him, and he launched himself out of the dream and off the couch.

It was the work of minutes to put on his suit, and then he was running up to the roof, looking for the others. They were crowded around a spot nearly a foot away from the door, staring up at the sky. Only Clint looked over when the door banged open in front of him, and smiled. Bucky came to stand behind him, staring at the same patch of sky everyone else was. It was remarkably unremarkable.

“Ok… what are we looking at?” Bucky asked.

Clint shrugged. “Tony says it’s a temporal disturbance. Thor says it’s a portal from another world. And it’s supposed to be opening up right here. We don’t-” His words were cut off by a sizzle and a popping sound. And a single sheet of paper appeared in the middle of the sky and gracefully floated down to them. Tony caught it, and Bucky’s eyes widened. There on the paper were the words he had just seen written in his dream.

_Bucky, I_ _’m alive. Alternate universe. See if Tony can create a machine to link our world to this one. I miss you. I love you. Love, Steve._

“Holy hell,” Bucky breathed, a sense of awe and absolute certainty crashing down on him, accompanied by a sudden joy so fierce it burned. Maybe this was his crazed mind just grasping at straws, but maybe, just maybe, it was real. He couldn’t say why he believed it. This was a bit beyond the realm of their normal crazy. But he did, he did believe it.

 “It wasn’t a dream,” he muttered. Then, as the paper began to catch fire around the edges, he said it again, stronger. “It wasn’t a dream!”

“What wasn’t?” Clint asked, looking apprehensively at the sky, then back at the paper, which was quickly turning to ash in Tony’s hands. He dropped it just before the last bit flared up, and they were left staring at a pile of ash on the floor.

“The portal is gone,” Thor announced.

“That message,” Bucky said, clutching to Clint’s arm. “Steve wrote that.”

Clint frowned at him. “Yeah, that’s what it said, but…”

“No, he wrote that. I saw him write it.”

“When was this?” Tony wanted to know.

“You know I’ve been dreaming a lot, right?”

“Yeah,” Clint said dryly. “We kinda got that. What with the five whole days of _sleeping_ you’ve been doing.”

“Right,” Bucky nodded. “Well, I’ve been dreaming about Steve. And just now, before Clint woke me up, I saw Steve write that note.”

It took some time to relate his dreams to them, and even more to convince them, but Bucky had the most wonderful feeling of hope in his chest now. No more did he want to simply sleep. He could see Steve again, and he wouldn’t have to be dreaming! It was crazy. A rational person wouldn’t have believed it. But rational people they were not. They all dealt with crazy on a daily basis, and Steve being in an alternate universe wasn’t exactly the oddest thing that had ever happened to one of them. Bucky took the chance that was offered him, and he held on with both hands. He wasn’t going to lose Steve. Not now, not ever.

The next day passed in a flurry of activity. As Tony perfected the machine, they were able to pass notes back and forth across the dimensions. Nothing much, nothing big, but enough to work out the kinks in the whole time-and-space machinery. The Thors on both ends were very helpful with their inter-dimensional knowledge, and both Tony and Not-Tony had some sort of evil twin-link going after the third message from the one that signed his notes as ‘Anthony Stark.’ Bucky fervently hoped he never witnessed the two of them in the same place at once. If it happened, he was betting on explosions. Large ones.

The best note came as the sixth day since Steve’s “death” drifted on towards evening. It popped and sizzled into the air right in front of Bucky, who had learned to be ready with a camera when he heard the first ‘pop.’ He snapped a picture, and re-read the words to himself over and over again for the next few (long) hours. It was from Steve, directly to him, and it read simply _Bucky, I love you, and I am coming back to you_. _Love, Steve_. It was probably a response to a mention Tony had put in one of his notes, about how upset Bucky had been. Whatever the cause, seeing it made Bucky feel warm and comforted.

That night, they hooked him up some machine of Tony’s invention, with little pads connecting wires from his head back to a view screen, and all kinds of monitoring shit stuck all over. It itched, and he didn’t think he’d ever get to sleep like that, and especially not with the glowing bubble of hope floating in his heart, but Bruce gave him a sleeping pill, and he dropped right off.

When he opened his eyes in his dream, Bucky saw Peggy again. This time, she smiled at him. “Well?” she asked.

“Steve’s really alive,” he told her. “We’re working it out. What are you?” He hadn’t meant to ask that last bit. Or, at least, not right then. But he was curious. How had he been able to dream of a different universe, and how had she done it?

Peggy laughed. “Well. What do you see me as?”

“Peggy Carter,” he answered. She laughed, looking pleased.

“Well, I suppose that makes sense. She was important in your lives. Come, I have one last thing to show you.” She turned, and led him back to his couch.

“Why?” Bucky asked. “Why help us?”

Peggy just laughed, and turned on the television. When he looked back for her, she was gone.

On the screen, Steve stood with Not-Tony, looking at the strange machine that was meant to send him home.

“So, once they’ve built it,” Steve was saying, “then they’ve got to tune it to the correct coordinates?”

“Yeah,” Not-Tony agreed. “They’ve also got to set it to 3. That’s very important. If they don’t set it correctly, it could still fry you coming in.”

“Shouldn’t we have told them that?” Steve asked. “I mean, I know you said they got the message, but what if…?”

“Eh,” Not-Tony shrugged. “They’ll figure it out. I’m a smart guy after all.”

“But…” Steve still looked worried.

“No, no, it’ll be fine,” Not-Tony insisted. “Once the machines link up, we’ll send you right back home! We’re just waiting on them, now.”

“Alright, but shouldn’t we send another message with the setting?” Steve asked again. Not-Tony opened his mouth to say something, and Bucky was pulled out of the dream. Though he felt as if he had just drifted off to sleep, the sun was already rising on a new day.

“3! Got it!” Tony cried, dashing off. Bucky ripped the wires off himself and followed. Before he got to the door, a sizzle and pop announced an incoming message from Steve.

_Tell Tony to put the machine on setting 3! Love, Steve_.

Bucky ran, catching up to Tony just before he turned the thing on, and swiftly switching the big dial on the front from 1 to 3. The others followed in, lining up along the walls of Tony’s lab, all eyes on the machine. Tony grinned, and pushed the giant red button on the top of the machine. Everyone held their breath. Now was the moment of truth. Had they done it properly? Would they get Steve back? Or… the alternative didn’t bear thinking about. Bucky refused to re-enact the last week. He never wanted to feel that lost and hopeless again.

The machine gave voice to a loud pop, and a blast of fire flared around the edges of the “landing pad”. Then the flames died, and there was another pop, louder, and then a BANG! of displaced air, and where there had been nothing at all, there stood Steve.

“Steve!” Bucky cried, racing forward to take hold of his lover, dragging him from the landing pad and into his arms. Steve was warm and solid under his fingers, blessedly, reassuringly _there_. His arms came up to wrap around Bucky, holding him just as tightly, and Bucky felt himself pulled against Steve’s chest, bowed head tucked neatly under his chin. He became aware that he was crying, but for that moment, he didn’t care. Steve was alive. Nothing else mattered.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve murmured to him, one large hand gently rubbing up and down on his back.

“You’re alive. You _jerk_. Don’t ever do that to me again! Punk.” His words were meant to have more sting in them, but they just came out relieved.

“I won’t if you won’t,” Steve said, and Bucky laughed through his tears. It wasn’t a promise either of them could make, in their line of work. But it made him feel better, nonetheless.

“Deal,” he agreed. “Nobody dies unless we both say so.”

 

A few days later, they were all gathered around the television in the common area to watch the official broadcast of Steve’s ‘Welcome Back’ interview. The man himself was curled up on the couch, Bucky firmly attached to his side, the way he had been since Steve had come back. He didn’t want to let go, still half afraid that he was dreaming again, and if he let go of Steve, he’d wake up. He supposed it was only fair, Steve had been a bit the same when he’d come back after the whole Winter Soldier thing. Less clingy, because Bucky wouldn’t let anyone near enough to touch, but stuck to his side all the same. Nobody minded, though. Steve and Bucky spooning on the couch was a common sight in the Avengers Tower.

“How did you get back?” the interviewer was asking Steve on-screen. On-screen-Steve shrugged.

“I guess,” he said, “it was a lot of teamwork, both from our end, and the other one. But really, I owe it all to Bucky. He was the one that convinced everyone my messages were real.”

“Hey!” Tony protested, from the recliner he was currently sharing with Pepper. “Look at that. No thanks at all for the man that _built the machine_ that brought you back, eh?”

“Thank you, Tony,” Steve told him, sincerely. “I really do appreciate what you did.”

“Well,” Tony sat back, mollified. “I guess the icicle really did have a big hand in getting us to pay attention to what was going on.”

On the television, the reporter asked about Riley, and all eyes flicked over to Sam.

“What?” he asked, attempting to look innocent.

“How’s Riley?” Steve asked him.

“He’s, ah…” Sam actually blushed. “We’re still exchanging notes. Tony and Anthony are working on a better way of cross-universe communication. So, I guess we’ll see what happens. It’s not like he’s my Riley, and I’m not his Sam. But it’s nice to know there’s a universe where he survived.”

“Good,” Steve nodded his approval. “He’s a good guy. Kept me company for that week I was stuck over there.”

The interview continued, Steve answering questions about the alternate universe, and all the differences he’d noticed, and everything he’d experienced over there.

“There’s one thing I didn’t tell them,” Steve said into Bucky’s ear.

“Oh yeah? What?” he asked.

“I dreamed about you,” Steve whispered. “Like I was seeing what was really going on while I was over there. Bruce finding you after the explosion, Sam making you eat, Tony making you drink water, stuff like that. I thought it was crazy, my brain making up stuff ‘cause I was missing you so bad. But then, I came back, and what really happened sounds a lot like my dreams.”

“Was Peggy in your dreams?” Bucky asked, not surprised that Steve had had them. After all, it made more sense than just one of them getting the dreams.

“Yeah, she was,” Steve sounded surprised. “She was the one showing me everything, like I was watching a TV she’d tuned to you.”

Bucky nodded. “Yeah, mine too. That was how I knew you were still alive, once I realized I wasn’t just dreaming.”

“Huh,” Steve thought about that for a second. “I don’t know if that was really Peggy, but whoever she was, we owe her a big thank you if we ever see her again.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed. “But I’m more interested in what I’m seeing right now.”

“Oh? And what’s that?” Steve asked, already knowing the answer.

“You,” Bucky told him, and leaned up for a kiss. “I love you, Steve,” he said, as they pulled apart. Steve was slightly flushed and grinning.

“I love you more,” he responded, and Bucky laughed.

“If you say so, Steve. If you say so.”


End file.
